tori-isms

"It always fascinates me how people make their choices."

"Maybe it's part of my upbringing, but I really am on a quest to get down to the bottom of an arguement. Sometimes I'm sitting there with a girlfriend going, 'That fingernail just completely went through my ovaries.' And what did I say that made that happen?"

"I absolutely love kids. The young ones really understand what's going on. They understand, but they can't put it into words because they haven't experienced it. They're very close to feeling these feelings. They ask about sex all the time, and they're 5 1/2. Now I've had to really think about how to answer them because I don't want their parents breathing down my neck. There are some things that they're not ready to hear. They can understand the concept of when you grow up you will use that thing that wiggles between your legs. You don't have to worry that it's just there for no reason. When they're old enough, it will grow as you grow and you'll understand it. They say, 'Is having a baby like eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?" and i say 'Very similar.'"

"Shoes are architecture."

"It has crossed my mind maybe that the public doesn't want my ultimate. But I can't censor or contrive. I think I'm lucky to have skated through under the guise of pop musician. I'm really a classical musician. If I get found out now, if the whistle is blown... maybe that's not such a bad thing."

"It goes back to studying mythology and really getting fascinated with a race of people who were driven underground. They were called faeries in later lore, but they've become this whole caricature. This is difficult to explain to people, when all they can think about is Tinkerbell."

"As my shrink said to me, 'There's got to be a time where you look at me and you don't need my anymore. I can become your friend and you can come and have tea with me, but you won't need me.'"

"What's good singing? You're just appealing to people's likes and dislikes. Who's to criticize? What they like is sometimes what they hear the most."

"Don't let them tell you that the mind is greater than the heart. That is a trap. The mind is very tricky. I don't trust my mind. It's really good, but I don't trust it."

"The more comfortable I get with my sexuality, the less it starts leaking all over the place. I think it's when you feel that you don't have anything else to say when you fall back on that age-old 'give a little shoulder, give a little wink, give a little sex' stuff. Because a lot of guys are up for a willy charge. A little willy charge every day is fine by them, even if it never actually gets to come out of their Levis."

"Beyond the logical mind there is the tummy. And I really believe this, because we can over think everything. Hey, I'm not writing things for some genius that's sitting trying to criticize, I'm writing from the tummy, because that goes beyond what somebody else's concept of 'cool' is."

"For some reason that smell of a male creature is just my preference. It's not like I couldn't see myself with a woman, but it's a choice I haven't made. Now that I couldn't."

"I am finding that vulnerability gives me great stength, because you're not hiding anymore. It's really about being a pioneer for myself, going into the places where I am not being taught. I have to teach myself."

"Anger is healthy, but out of balance if it doesn't have compassion."

"I feel if you talk about the self it's like a microcosm of wilder issues. I know I go into areas which are threatening because it's all about the human going in to play with them. That's how I find out what I'm made up of."

"People who become the front runners often used to be outcasts or loners."

"I'm not a habit, I'm a lifestyle. I will not be a habit for man. Ever."

"My dad was a minister so I bought the whole Christian thing, but all I really cared about was spaghetti or tapioca pudding. I just wanted to lay on my bed and squeeze my legs, which is what a young girl should do, although I didn't realize that at the time. I laid on my bed and squeezed my legs together and thought, 'Oh, this is a curiousity.'"

"There are lots of things I don't sing about. Sometimes I put something in a song, but I don't want to wreck someone's life, so I disguise it a little. I don't believe in censorship, but if someone's going to be hurt, names and places should be changed."

"To have some honest moments is a rarity. We're not encouraged to really look at what we're feeling."

"You be great at what you do. You be stellar. I believe in excellence."

"The sense of loss is such a tricky one, because we always feel like our worth is tied up into stuff that we have, not that our worth can grow with things we are willing to lose."

"The anger lies in each of us; it just depends on how you deal with it. You have to dive into your own psyche to find out who lives there. Most of the time, the monster that hides inside you, is the one you let loose on the others."

"I just try to strip myself, peel myself like an onion. At different layers I discover stuff. I do it publicly, and it helps to inspire somebody else, which inspires somebody else, we're talking about a really exciting world here."

"If you call me an airy-fairy new age hippy waif I will cut your penis off."

"When you're good at what you're doing , when you're skilled and work all the time, then there is a place for everyone and you don't have to feel threatened."

"There's a lot of shame in being famous; that's because so many people want it and haven't achieved it and are envious."

"I think that people who can't believe in faeries aren't worth knowing... they've transcended cool. I just think that alternate realities makes you a good writer."

"I'm too wacky for most weirdos. Who am I to judge?"

"I want to marry Lucifer. Even though I had a crush on Jesus."

"I realized I was stealing fire from the men in my life. THe album is about the descent of a woman to find her shadow side. The side she supressed with her relationships with men."

"I'm not a part of this business. I was playing music before people were peeing their beds."

"For all these years I felt like all the different people at a dinner party. When you've got the virgin and the whore sitting next to each other at dinner, they're likly to judge each other harshly."

"This time I didn't have anyone looking over my shoulder. When I don't have to answer to anybody, I feel I'm more ruthless."

"Music is so much a part of me I think it's in my cells. If I lost my hands and I lost my voice and I was just sitting there I'd still think in tone and rhythm because that's just how I think every second."

"I believe in peace, bitch."

"I think the real musicians, the ones that feel it in their soul, hear their instruments speaking."

"I would like to think I'm a rasin girl, because in my mind they're more openminded. Cornflake girls are totally self-centered, don't care about anything or anybody."

"Playing is the only place where I've felt in touch with my sexuality, my spirituality, and my emotions, and never, ever, ever anywhere else. So my life is a bit tricky because when I'm not playing, I'm just trying to walk down the street."

"The problem with my Christian upbringing was the role models for women. The idea passed down to you was that you couldn't be a passionate woman-not a virgin, but a woman-and still claim experience and wisdom."

"I don't hate men. I give equal time in my hate. It's acts of people that I hate, whether they be man or woman, it's their behaviour that I hate."

"The songs kind of stalk me, and when I just throw a line on them to try and get them out of my life they become pretty vicious. They come in. They move in, and they insist. Because they won't accept me lessening them, just because I'm uncomfortable."

"If I couldn't play, I've no idea what kind of bitter person I would've become. Because that's where I was able to express some kind of freedom without guilt. Guilt for passion."

"I would find myself either the lovey-dovyest-woviest sweet pea, or a mad woman."

"To me, anger is only one small splotch on the palette... when you're writing. And emotions are part of that palette... which translates into tone, rhythm, voicings... how you use this 'stuff,' whether it's humor, which is kind of a bit part of my palette."

"I get to know them as beings. The songs aren't inaminate- they're very much real, they just don't have bodies. They do have shoe collections, but they don't have bodies."

"My strength isn't as a technician. My strenth is as a composer."

"My commitment is to cross over that river, the river of victimhood."

"I was very influenced by these wonderful gay men who gave me the confidence to dress up, and taught me how to put on make-up, and gave me the courage on how to kiss a boy... They taught me how to become a young woman. They taught me about tenderness."

"We're communicating in a language that other people speak but might not be able to play themselves."

"Womanhood is a whole different thing from Girlhood. Girlhood is a gift. Womanhood is a choice."

"When a man you love walks out of your life, and you have that ache, you feel not only can you love again, but you can love a son. The son or the daughter is the rebirth of your soul."

"It was better to be a hooker than to be somebody's wife and get the shit kicked out of you all the time. As a wife you had no rights. At least as a mistress or a prostitute- in the old days- you could do all right. You could tell them when to put on their boxers and go."

"I'm not the kind of woman who takes things sitting down."

"The violence between women is unbelievable... women try to make each other crawl so that their knees are bleeding."

"What girls do to each other is beyond description; no Chinese torture comes close."

"I have my own parties. They involve being barefoot with a piece of fried chicken and a margarita in each hand."

"There are things that I would disagree with Jesus about and I feel really good about that."

"I'm a stargazer, I'm a fantasizer, follow me and you can see a true path to your dreams and beyond."

"I've been a groupie and I wish I hadn't been, but I was and it happens. I can relate."

"Yeah I do write about stuff I'm going through, but I think you've got to find a giggle somewhere in stuff that would scare the poop outta ya. That's what fascinates me."

"Mess with me and you will not survive."

"Socks and mittens are my friends."

"I'm now letting go of the belief that I need to look to somebody else for my fire and access to a well of expression."

"In our minds, love and lust are really separated. It's hard to find someone that can be kind and you can trust enough to leave your kids with, and isn't afriad to throw her man up against the wall and lick him from head to toe."

"I really respect anybody who stands by their truths."

"Whatever it is, it's a charge, a current, it's chemistry. It's the thing that ignites very much like electricity. I'm learning a big thing here, which is, it's not personal. When you get involved with somebody, it's not that they aren't worth of your love, or that they are, it's that they reflect something to you, and you to them. That's why there's a charge. It's not that they're exciting or not exciting, they're just not striking your current of my current. THat doesn't mean that they're not striking someone else's."

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